Miramax have fallen foul of Oscar organisers with their aggressive marketing campaign for their poster boy Martin Scorsese. The company, headed by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, incorporated glowing quotes made by Oscar winning legend Robert Wise about the Gangs of New York director in a series of print ads.

But Academy President Frank Pierson declared on Friday "[The ad is] an outright violation of Academy rules," as Academy members are not to divulge their picks.

And while Wise's words were fairly quoted originally in his own opinion column in a Los Angeles newspaper , Pierson and other Academy officials slammed Miramax for reprinting these quotes under the headline "Two-time Academy Award Winner Robert Wise declares Scorsese deserves the Oscar for Gangs of New York."

The Miramax ad has backfired so much that voters are even asking for their ballots back so they can X-out Scorsese's name.

Halle Berry looks set to sink her claws into Catwoman. The Oscar-winning Monsters Ball beauty is in line to play the felonious feline in a new movie by French filmmaker Pitof.

Berry is the cat's meow and now favourite among studio bosses at Warner Brothers after Nicole Kidman turned the role down. But fans will have to wait to see Berry slip on the tight leather catsuit as she starts work on a new film Gothika